Tag Archives: loveless barn

Grammy Award winner Rhonda Vincent's new Taken album is charting at No. 1 on Billboard's Bluegrass chart, at 21 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and at 19 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.

Taken is Vincent's first release on her own Upper Management label, and it's her fourth album to top Billboard's Bluegrass chart.

"I am so thrilled, especially since this is a project we have worked so hard to create all on our own," Vincent said in a statement. "This means so much because it contains friends and family and is music we created from our hearts."

Vincent is currently on tour with her backing band, The Rage. She'll play the Music City Roots show at Nashville's Loveless Cafe Barn on Wednesday, Oct. 20. Check www.musiccityroots.com for more information.

Cowan first came to attention as a member of New Grass Revival, the genre-tweaking band that laid the tracks for what is now called "newgrass" music. In recent years, he has performed and recorded as a solo artist with the backing of the John Cowan band, but this year he found it difficult to find time to tour and promote his new The Massenburg Sessions album and to play with the Doobies.

He is planning an "American Idle Tour" with stops in Maryland, Virginia, Knoxville, Chattanooga, North Carolina and Nashville, after which he'll disband the Cowan Band and become a full-time Doobie Brother.

"It's very hard to let go of my band," Cowan said in a statement. "These guys are so special to me -- they really are like brothers -- but over the past year, it's become increasingly difficult to manage touring as a solo artist and balancing the Doobie Brothers’ schedule. It's not fair for me to ask them to sit by and wait for my schedule to clear up, so I'm making an incredibly difficult decision to finish up the dates on our books and set my solo career to the side for now."

The country stars are two of the featured artists at The Baptist Hospital Foundation’s Rock the Cradle fundraiser. The cocktail reception and dinner starts at 6:30 p.m. with performances set for 8 p.m. at the Loveless Barn.

Proceeds from the event will go to babies born at Baptist Hospital and the Beaman Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Reservations for table sponsorships must be made by October 5 and range in price from $1,000-$5,000.

Mary Gauthier plays Music City Roots at the Loveless Barn on Aug. 18 (photo: Michael Wilson).

Wednesday night’s Music City Roots show at the Loveless Barn is several things to many people. It’s a radio show on WSM AM 650. It’s a live music event featuring talent including Nashville’s Mary Gauthier. And it’s a fundraiser for Nashville-based organization The Nature Conservancy.

All proceeds from ticket sales will go to aid the Conservancy, which is working on the front lines to help restore Gauthier’s native Louisiana after the BP oil spill.

The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 ($5 ages 6–18, $5 students 19-and-older with valid college ID, free ages 5-younger), and are available at the door or through www.musiccityroots.com. The Loveless Barn is located at 8400 Highway 100 (646‑9700).

Tim O’Brien enjoyed his time this year as a handsomely compensated addendum.

He had fun writing, singing and playing on Dierks Bentley’s new album, and gigging with Steve Martin, and his spring tour as a multi-instrumentalist in Mark Knopfler’s band brought great shows, fine catering and luxury hotels. Knopfler even asked O’Brien to stay on, at least through the summer, an offer at which most musicians would have leapt.

“The money is good, of course, and I might have learned even more, but continuing the tour would have meant abandoning most of a season of what I do,” O’Brien said. “My music is too important, and its call too insistent, and I had to say no.”

One week, O’Brien was on private jets with Knopfler. The next, he was in England, on a train, with a fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki and suitcase, heading to club gigs.

O’Brien is no small timer. He’s a Grammy winner and a much-lauded singer-songwriter who has been making expansive acoustic albums — the latest is the brand new Chicken & Egg — for more than a quarter-century. But his career has largely played out in front of hundreds, not thousands, of fans at a time. He has done quite well that way, inspiring audience members including Bentley and Chris Thile to embrace roots and branches, and at 56 O’Brien has become something of an elder statesman of progressive acoustic music. And he’s happiest when serving his own muse.

“It feels really good to get on a tour with Knopfler, who is a real gentleman and a great songwriter and musician,” said O’Brien, lunching at Athens restaurant on Eighth Ave. S. in Nashville. “It feels even better to go do your own stuff, on your own again.”Continue reading →

Tim O'Brien will perform at Music City Roots at the Loveless Barn on Aug. 4.

One of the best weekly reasons for Nashville music lovers to get out of town -- and on the road to the Loveless Barn -- continues this Wednesday (August 4) with headliner Tim O’Brien, a bluegrass virtuoso who’s a mesmerizing force to behold on several instruments.

Dana Cooper has been working at this music thing for more than 40 years now, and in that time he’s managed to move from auditorium stages to living rooms.

“I had a duo with Shake Russell in Texas (in the late 1970s and early ’80s), and we had roadies, a light guy, a sound guy and a guy to keep people away from us,” said Cooper, sipping from a coffee cup at Flatrock Café on Nolensville Pike.

“It’s the most financially successful I was in music, and also the most unhappy I’ve been,” Cooper said. “Now, I love playing small places, and I love playing house concerts. It’s about community, potluck, and people talking in the kitchen. They feed you, put you up and give you directions to where you’re going, and it’s interesting to me to see what kind of characters are out there and what they have to say for themselves.”

“More than anything, we showcase the culture of Nashville,” said Laurie Dashper, Music City Roots’ director of artist relations and associate producer. “We do jazz and rock and country and bluegrass and Americana and blues, because it’s all related to each other.”Continue reading →

Powerful belter Brandi Carlile is headed back out on tour for a 42-date summer jaunt, and that run brings her back to Nashville for a June 16 Music City Roots show at the Loveless Barn.

It'll be a busy summer for the singer, who continues to tour behind late 2009's Give Up The Ghost album and grabs a mix of festival dates.

One fest Middle Tennesseans can certainly catch her at: Manchester's Bonnaroo, set for June 10-13. (She's scheduled for June 12.)

She'll also take part in the reanimated celebration of female musicians, Lilith Fair (that fest is headed to Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on August 7, and we're still awaiting lineup details, but it doesn't seem terribly likely that Carlile's on the list -- she already has a crop of Lilith dates on her itinerary, including one in Alabama on August 12).